Zara

Zara — Biography

Born Neşe Zara Yılmaz, Zara came from a Kurdish family with roots in Adıyaman and both Alevi and Sunni members; she was born on 15 January 1976 in the Üsküdar district of Istanbul and, as a child, released eight albums under the name "Neşecik". She twice won the national inter-high-school music contest in Turkish folk singing, in 1991 and 1993, and graduated from the Voice Training Department of Istanbul Technical University's Turkish Music State Conservatory. In 1996 she passed the TRT exam to become a salaried folk-music vocalist, appeared in the Yunus Emre Müzikali in 1997, and in 1998 released her debut album under the name Zara, Avuntu, the same year she moved into film opposite Tarık Akan in Atıf Yılmaz's Eylül Fırtınası. She continued with the albums Boyut, Misafir, Özlenenler, Zamanı Geldi and the Sufi-music record Bülbül-i Şeyda, was named best female folk-music artist at the Golden Butterfly Awards four years running from 2000 to 2003, and founded her own label, ZR Müzik, in 2007. She hosted the programmes Zamanı Geldi on TRT 1, Tanrı Misafiri on atv, and, with Oktay Kaynarca, Salı Sefası on TV8. As an actress she appeared in the series Gelin, İpsiz Recep, Eşkıya Dünyaya Hükümdar Olmaz and Mavera. She married Ulus Müzik owner İskender Ulus in 2002 and divorced in 2007; she married journalist Akif Beki in 2012, had a daughter, Dila, that same year, and the couple separated in 2016.